by Don Lutz from his book
"The Weaning of America"

The idea that human life is worth more than the lives of the other animals may be the point of view of most humans, but it is not the view of all humans, and certainly not the viewpoint of the animals...

It is just before the hunting season begins. The older deer are thinking of the upcoming attack. To them the hunters are an army, much like the armies that humans send against each other...

At least the human/deer wars last only several weeks of the year, and are quite predictable at that. But these wars are different from the conflicts between humans; deer are even more defenseless than the human peasants that the animals watch die in the big wars. Deer have little interest in weaponry. We would rather share and live in harmony with all others.

Humans, of course, are not all bad. Some of them even try to help us. In a way, we're quite fortunate. At least they don't treat us like dogs. How cruel to feed and fondle, and then suddenly chain you to the ground by the neck. Some dogs are neck-chained all the time.

And deer are certainly fortunate not to be imprisoned in great numbers as are cows, chickens and even mice. It's been said that humans do horrible things to animals in hard buildings. Things so horrible that they must not even be seen by other humans. Humans would certainly never do these things to other humans, even though they are killing each other all the time.

Yes, deer are lucky in many ways. We haven't been needled and changed like the prison food animals. Or taken from our mothers and kept in the dark until eaten. If something tries to kill you in the real world, at least you have a chance to get away. The prison food animals are certainly among the unluckiest of all creatures.

Why do humans try to pretend that they are nice to animals? They are always making pretty pictures of animals, and have show prisons where people go to look at animals before they are dead. But most of the time humans only look at animals when they are eating them or wearing their skins. How strange and different humans are. All animals have a few that they fear in the real world. But in the human parts of the world, all animals fear humans.

Humans don't seem to like the real world. They are making more real world into human world every day. And the human world is not a nice place. It has bad smells and bad water. It seems as if humans have taken fire and burned things from the real world to make things for the human world. But all the things they make are dead; it's as if they speed up the process of life and make things dead too soon.

Of course, some animals have fought in the wars. The bravery of the tiny animals in the face of the prison weapons is without equal. And how cruel it was to lure the tiny animals to great fields of food, before the poison sprayers attacked.

Humans are very good at making war. They have terrible weapons which they use against each other and the other animals, then leave in a pile and make more weapons. Humans spend most of their time destroying and killing in one way or another.

Some animals think that humans were not so war-like way back before. And they were much more like the other animals. It's as if they have learned to be more cruel every year, and now most humans never think about the feelings of the other animals.

How can they not know that the real world animals think, feel and love? Perhaps it's because we don't say as much with our mouths as they, or because our faces don't act like theirs when we talk. But somehow, just because of these wonderful difference -- the differences that make every animal unique and beautiful -- humans have decided to shoot us, trap us, poison us, imprison us, change us, and even eat us, though there is surely enough real food for every human.